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Mobile Phones and Elevators Answered

Ahem. Theoretically, an elevator is a perfect faraday cage -- no radio waves should be able to get into them. Mobile phones shouldn't work in them. But rogers says that their phones do work in them. So here's my question for you, instructables community: do rogers phones work in elevators? If so, why?

The only theory that we could come up with was that each elevator has a little repeater in it, but that seems a bit costly.

Discussions

i'm with verizon and my phone hasn't lost a signal in an elevator yet
as kite said most elevators are indeed NOT solid metal boxes...first off most of the thing probably isn't metal (just a frame with skin that you might think is metal) second...even if it is all metal it's not exactly designed to be a Faraday cage...there are rubber bits between the places where things meet (like when the door closes) so you don't have full continuity of the surfaces or anything like that...there are PLENTY of holes and gaps in even the most modern of elevators

It's true that the elevators themselves might have gaps, but most are in a concrete shaft which is strengthened by a lattice of rebar, and it's the grid of rebar that creates the faraday cage. Underground parking-lots and concrete buildings provide bad cell coverage too.